AS someone obsessed by the idea of catching impossibly large and beautiful salmon in impossibly large and beautiful rivers I have had to come to understand that the hoping and wishing may almost be as exciting as the arriving and doing. 

On a day when Adrian Heskin and trainer-rider John Cullen shared the riding honours with doubles, the Henry de Bromhead-trained Sizing Codelco looked the day’s best prospect for the future when justifying odds-on favouritism in the €25 Punters Pack Maiden Hurdle at Fairyhouse.

Pride Of The Artic, the outsider of three runners, produced a fine display to land the John F McGuire Novice Chase at Listowel yesterday.

THE National Hunt card at Limerick yesterday afternoon attracted national hunt weather but it was all sunshine for jockey Tom Doyle, who secured a 175-1 treble — his first in this country.